Calidore Quartet: American Tapestry

The Strad Issue: March 2026

Description: A New York-based quartet explores its heritage to fine effect

Musicians: Calidore Quartet

Works: Barber: String Quartet. Korngold: String Quartet no.3. Marsalis: At the Octoroon Balls: nos. 3 4 and 5. Williams: With malice toward none

Catalogue number: SIGNUM SIGCD970

This is an attractive set, of which only Barber’s sole String Quartet is at all well known. In the first movement Molto allegro the opening unison declarations are fiercely played, and effectively balanced by silky, sensual passages in between, with the later contrapuntal sections having both energy and clarity.

The Calidore demonstrates a moving fragility and vulnerability in the Molto adagio, arguably more telling in this form than is generally found in its famous later incarnation, the Adagio for Strings. Here, too, the short finale has its own emotional complexity.

The three movements from Wynton Marsalis’s At the Octoroon Balls all have the exuberance of their roots in New Orleans dances. No.4, ‘Many gone’, is a lament for slavery, and features an extended cadenza for cello, splendidly played by Estelle Choi. The last of them, ‘Hellbound Highball’, is a terrific depiction of a train ride.

After John Williams’s short ‘With malice toward none’, arranged for string quartet from his film score for Lincoln, comes Korngold’s Third Quartet, in which the Calidore shows sinew and tenderness in the first movement and dry, spiky energy in the staccato scherzo.

The Sostenuto receives an affecting, delicate performance, which gives way to agitated anguish. The Allegro finale is mainly happy and dancing, and unequivocally in D major. The recording is close and rich.

TIM HOMFRAY